


Armor

by SeaweedWrites



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blogging, Drama, Gen, Introspective John, One-sided Johnlock (Maybe?), POV John Watson, Pining John, Talk about war, talk about suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 19:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12195783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaweedWrites/pseuds/SeaweedWrites
Summary: John reflects on the armor that he built for himself while in Afghanistan, and how a chance meeting with one 'obnoxious arsehole' changed the course of his life forever.





	Armor

**Author's Note:**

> I actually found this fic in an unfinished form while looking for another writing of mine on my computer. So I finished it and polished it up a bit. 
> 
> Just a warning. It does have mentions of war and suicide. It's nothing graphic or descriptive, and it is brief, so if that upsets you, it may be best to read some of my less angsty works. 
> 
>  
> 
> John reflects on the armor that he built for himself while in Afghanistan, and how a chance meeting with one obnoxious arsehole changed the course of his life forever.

I was such a different man when I came home from Afghanistan than I am now.

 

To say I wore my heart on my sleeve would be an immense understatement.

 

When I walked down the street, I couldn't even be arsed to look around at the hustle and bustle of people around me. My gaze was always down, I didn't want to talk to any people, but I would go out of my way not to step on a bug.

 

How did a person like me become a soldier?

 

Well, it's actually quite easy.

 

I became a doctor because I wanted to save lives. And where better to do so then on the battlefield?

 

I didn't realize how horrific it was going to be.

 

You can save hundreds of lives- and we did- but it's the ones that you lose that you can never forget.

 

Over time, you develop a patina- your own set of armor- over the skin where your heart lies. It's thin at first- millimeters thick, but it grows each day, with each death.

 

It never failed to pain me when we lost a soldier- a good man, a man with people waiting for him back home.

 

People who would never see him again.

 

When I got shot, I saw this from the other side- the sadness reflected in my fellow doctors' eyes. I could see their fear that they couldn't get the bleeding under control, and the relief when the bullet was finally removed and I was on the mend.

 

I was lucky. A couple of inches lower and I never would have made it off the battlefield. But I was also very unlucky. It was in my left shoulder, which limited my movement with my dominant hand, so it would be impossible to do my job properly.

 

It was bad enough to send me home.

 

I would never be a doctor or a soldier ever again.

 

The army found me a tiny flat for a cheap price. It wasn't much but... it wasn't much.

 

My patina grew thicker each day. It no longer just covered my heart. Now it shrouded all of me, kept me at bay from the rest of the world, or kept them at bay from me.

 

Sometimes, I would disassociate, and I could see myself getting short with people, but I was helpless to stop myself. Over time, I saw myself withdrawing into a shell of my own making. My heart beat a hasty retreat from my sleeve and lodged itself deep inside of me, never again to be found, I figured.

 

Of course, the army paid for me to go to a therapist. She had no idea what attempting to sleep was like- waking up in a sweat most every night, desperately panting for breath, still smelling the sand and blood and gunpowder of Afghanistan.

 

If she had known that I still had a gun, and I thought about using it almost every single day, I have a feeling that her advice to me would have been very different.

 

But instead, she told me to blog about my feelings, and my nightmares- the ones that I could never explain. The ones she could never, ever understand.

 

She wouldn't want to understand.

 

I resisted her attempts to make me blog. I told her that nothing ever happens to me.

 

Until the day that it did.

 

The first time I met you, I could feel the patina around my skin- my armor- thicken. You were rude and arrogant and dissected me like a razor sharp scalpel. You had the gall to assume that I would actually want to room with you.

 

And yet, there I was. I met you at your flat, and against all of my better judgments, I walked right into your life.

 

The scalpel came out, and I felt a tiny chink in the armor

 

 

 

“ _Seen a lot of injuries then, violent deaths.”_

 

“ _Hmm, yes.”_

 

“ _A bit of trouble, too, I'd bet.”_

 

“ _Of course. Yes. Enough for a lifetime. Far too much.”_

 

“ _Wanna see some more?”_

 

“ _Oh, God,_ yes”'

 

 

 

24 hours before, I was a broken man. I had no prospects, no dreams, no desires, and no real motivation to move forward with my life. 

 

I could never tell you to your face that I was taking that walk in the park to say goodbye to London. I had planned to go back to my flat afterwards and shoot myself. 

 

And then I met Stamford, and he led me to you. 

 

I'm sitting here on my laptop, writing all of this in a blog entry that only I will ever see, while you sleep peacefully on the couch, exhausted after yet another long, successful case.

 

I could watch the rise and fall of your pale, beautiful chest for the rest of my life, and I would never tire of it. 

 

Perhaps one day I will have the balls to show you this blog entry.

 

Perhaps one day I will have the balls to tell you how I feel about you.

 

Or perhaps not.

 

 

 

 

 

John's mouse hovered between the  _PUBLISH_ and  _DELETE_ buttons on his blog for what seemed like forever. 

 

As per usual with his post-case crashes, Sherlock ate like he hadn't seen food in a week (it'd been about three days), and then went down for his normal 12-16 hour post-case sleep. 

 

Only this time, he hadn't even made it to his bedroom. 

 

So John had helped him to the couch, where he'd been sacked out for the past three hours. He'd sleep until past noon tomorrow, John knew. 

 

John himself was exhausted, mentally and physically, but he also had the post-case high that came after a job well done. 

 

He stared at the screen until his eyes couldn't focus any longer and he had to force himself to stay awake. 

 

Finally, his hand moved slightly to the left and he clicked the button. 

 

 

“Perhaps one day, Sherlock. Perhaps one day.”

 


End file.
